it's a distinction with A TON of difference. Well-functioning democracies have a push-and-pull that tends to slow things down BUT also prevents massive outreaches. Systems with tons of "sides" are stabler than dual systems because of this.
> It doesn't matter if you have a thousand people working to appease the ideological whims of one absolute ruler or a thousand people with the same set of ideological whims, it's still one set of ideological whims being worked towards.
that's exactly the point - there's a third option.
>it's a distinction with A TON of difference. Well-functioning democracies have a push-and-pull that tends to slow things down BUT also prevents massive outreaches. Systems with tons of "sides" are stabler than dual systems because of this.
Right, a democracy won't succumb to one insane leader peddling particularly insane whims the way a dictatorship possibly can. But for the other 99/100 years of the century when things are business as usual it's a distinction without a difference.
The fact that we have a nominal democracy doesn't change the fact that we're being ruled by the small ideological minority that holds the bulk of the power in the system.
>that's exactly the point - there's a third option.
Yeah, we could have a government by some semblance of the people and all the diversity of that implies, but we don't, at least not to any serious degree at the federal level, so here we are.
> But for the other 99/100 years of the century when things are business as usual it's a distinction without a difference.
"business as usual" under a totalitarian regime is slightly different from "business as usual" under a democratic regime. We have plenty of examples of both in the world right now. They're not equivalent...
> It doesn't matter if you have a thousand people working to appease the ideological whims of one absolute ruler or a thousand people with the same set of ideological whims, it's still one set of ideological whims being worked towards.
that's exactly the point - there's a third option.